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Reconnaissance Pip McManus

Reconnaissance

I was never given a story as a child to explain the absence of a father. It was a taboo subject. In 2010 I was invited to participate in an exhibition Manila, the theme was ancestral stories. This provided an extraordinarily timely opportunity to investigate this story as not long before my father’s flying log book came into my hands. Reading it was both revealing and sobering. He flew Catalina flying boats, out of Darwin, throughout the Pacific region in the final stages of World War II. As it turns out, the most intense entries all relate to sorties in and around the Philippines. The log book and cloth escape maps (carried by pilots when flying over enemy territory), along with family photos and archival footage have provided the primary source material for this video/installation work.